There Isn’t A DACA Deal Because Republicans Oppose DACA

When President Trump spoke by phone with Sen. Richard J. Durbin around 10:15 a.m. last Thursday, he expressed pleasure with Durbin’s outline of a bipartisan immigration pact and praised the high-ranking Illinois Democrat’s efforts, according to White House officials and congressional aides.

The president then asked if Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), his onetime foe turned ally, was on board, which Durbin affirmed. Trump invited the lawmakers to visit with him at noon, the people familiar with the call said.

But when they arrived at the Oval Office, the two senators were surprised to find that Trump was far from ready to finalize the agreement. He was “fired up” and surrounded by hard-line conservatives such as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who seemed confident that the president was now aligned with them, according to one person with knowledge of the meeting.

Trump told the group he wasn’t interested in the terms of the bipartisan deal that Durbin and Graham had been putting together. And as he shrugged off suggestions from Durbin and others, the president called nations from Africa “shithole countries,” denigrated Haiti and grew angry. The meeting was short, tense and often dominated by loud cross-talk and swearing, according to Republicans and Democrats familiar with the meeting.

Trump’s impulsiveness and subideological ignorance aren’t an asset in making a deal. But I think Occam’s Razor reveals the real problem here:

Senate Republicans filibustered the DREAM Act in 2010, House Republicans refused to hold a vote on the Gang of 8 bill in 2013, Republican AGs filed suit to block DACA, and a Republican president preempted them by canceling it.

After all that, Senate Democrats struck a deal with Senate Republican immigration moderates and then the White House scuttled it by turning the steering wheel over to Tom Cotton and letting the president rant about shitholes.